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Tracy Snoddon

1999-03 EC: A Primer on Inter-Governmental Grants (working paper)

Snodden, T., & Wen, J-F.

published: 1999 | Research publication | Working Paper - Economics

ABSTRACT: The principal aim of our paper is to provide a primer on the foundations of the theory of intergovernmental grants, suitable for newcomers to this active field of research. In addition, we provide a selective survey of recent theoretical papers on grants, focusing particularly on non-cooperative games between different levels of government in a federal system. The sections of the paper correspond to broad topics: equalization grants, revenue-sharing grants, and conditional grants. To enhance the paper's pedagogical value, we provide a simple and (as much as possible) unified mathematical treatment of each topic to accompany a discursive description of the main insights found in the literature.